Avoca Fish Pie

How exciting, my first post! And funnily enough, it's a recipe including a food I'm not crazy about, fish.
I could eat shellfish all day, and am quite partial to a serving of good ol' Donegal Catch, but proper fillets of fish.. I'm not so keen! I made this dish because I wanted to try something new, and I figured it wouldn't be too fishy with it being a pie and all. Also I thought I'd be a nice girlfriend and serve it to James (the boyfriend) as he likes fish and pies, so inevitably this would suit him just fine!

This particular recipe comes from the Avoca Café Cookbook. I love all things Avoca so I figured if I'm going to like any fish pie recipe, it would probably be this one. The Avoca recipe calls for smoked haddock, however my local fishmongers were fresh out, so I settled on smoked cod instead. I also omitted the hardboiled eggs as I'm not a fan of these either.

Recipe

770g/1.5lbs smoked haddock
2 onions, peeled and chopped
600mls/1 pint full-cream milk
1 bay leaf
10 black peppercorns
110g/4oz butter, plus extra for the topping
50g/2oz plain flour
4 eggs, hardboiled, shelled and halved
A bunch of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
200g/7oz frozen peas
6 tablespoons breadcrumbs

Method

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF/gas mark 4. Put the haddock in a saucepan with the onions, milk, bay leaf and peppercorns. Place over a moderate heat, bring slowly to the boil and poach the fish for 5 minutes, or until it flakes easily.

Remove the fish and set aside to cool, reserving the cooking liquid.

Gently melt the butter in a saucepan and whisk in the flour.

Strain the reserved milk from cooking the fish and gradually stir it into the roux. Bring to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes, stirring all the time. Season with salt and pepper.

Break the fish into large chunks and place in a shallow oven-proof dish. Add the hardboiled eggs, parsley and peas and pour the sauce on  top. Scatter over the breadcrumbs and dot generously with butter.



Bake in the preheated oven for 30-40 minutes, until brown and bubbling.

The finished product.

Both James and I had this for dinner served with a baked potato, and the verdict?

Delicious. This dish was very tasty, it wasn't overly fishy which worked out really well. I will definitely be making this again, and maybe next time I might add in some different kinds of fish to mix it up a bit.